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The Bible As A School Book · The American Soul: America's Christian Heritage

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy eleven verse 18 through 21.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land of the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, folks.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of America's Christian Heritage Podcast, where I'm glad you all are joining us here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you were with us on the previous one, we started uh Benjamin Rush's uh essay, part of his essay's Defense of the Use of the Bible in schools.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you um were here for the previous podcast, you've already heard the first half of this, you can just skip forward to the 24-minute mark, and we'll pick up where we left off.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you haven't, you can go ahead and listen to this first half.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we just wanted to try and put it all in one place.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so um so that's the way we're doing it today.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: At any rate, I'm glad you're here.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: For those of y'all that continue to share both podcasts, uh, thank you very much.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Lee Reviews, thank you very much for those of y'all who continue to share the Countryside Book series, uh, the first two books in that series, and tell others about it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Very grateful for that and for your reviews, and for those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very grateful for your prayers for me, for my family, podcast, writing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, Father, thank you for today.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for you, Father, and your son, Jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the time to record this podcast.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the people that listen to it and share it, Father.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh leave reviews, please be with them, be with their families, guide them, bless them, surround them with your angels, protect them from evil of any kind.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Help us to truly follow the commands of your son, Jesus Christ, Father.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: To love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: To love our neighbors as ourselves.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Walk beside us each day, Father.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Carry us when we don't have the strength to carry on.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Give us the wisdom to see what you want us to do and the courage to act on it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Be with those who are brokenhearted, who feel alone, abused, abandoned, depressed, suicidal.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Comfort them.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Be like the be with those who feel like failures, Father.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to remember that in our weakness you're strong.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Keep us on the narrow path all the way home to you.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Watch over our leaders in the pulpit and in the state.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And be with those again, Father, listening.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Their families, their marriages, their children.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And God in my words are in your son's name.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: We ask and pray.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I talked about this uh briefly on the American Soul podcast, or I will soon, but uh Florida has passed a law.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: They passed it a couple years ago, Senate Bill 1264.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, it requires instruction on communism, the history, the consequences, atrocities of communism.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: It includes communism here in the United States and in Latin America, uh, as well as around the rest of the world, communist revolutions, the atrocities again by communist regimes such as Mao and China, uh, the cultural revolution there, and the persecutions and mass killings, which you'd have to keep going to today because it's still going on there.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you can go back and look at the Soviet Union.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um you see the tie there immediately with socialism, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's really just what's in the name?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're all just different shades of the same evil, and they all go hand in hand with the same with the evil of Islam.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a great deal in Florida that we're starting to teach that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: We we should be teaching constantly throughout the year, each year, about the atrocities of Muslims, in addition to that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we we ought to put God and Jesus Christ and the Bible back in the center of public education.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I know there's some people out there that are immediately gonna go with, well, uh what about the atrocities of the Christians?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you really ought to teach that because it shows when people who claim to be Christians aren't following Christ, and you ought to particularly show which denominations in particular perpetrated those atrocities.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that that would definitely get some people riled up in the United States.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they wouldn't like that too much.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a great thing.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought I would go back and read through uh Benjamin Rush, one of our preeminent founders.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote in 1798, he put together a collection of some of his writings and republished them in uh a work titled Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, right, by Benjamin Rush.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to read from the essay, A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a school book, addressed to the Reverend Jeremy Belknapp of Boston.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we've gone over this piece on the American Soul podcast a number of times, but kind of in pieces.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I just thought it'd be easier here to kind of put it all together.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's important today because we've taken the Bible out, and it it ought to be the center of our education.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Dear sir, it is now several months since I promised to give you my reasons for preferring the Bible as a school book to all other compositions.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I shall not trouble you with an apology for my delaying so long to comply with my promise, but shall proceed immediately to the subject of my letter.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Before I state my arguments in favor of teaching children to read by means of the Bible, I shall assume the five following propositions.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: One that Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: two, that a better knowledge of this religion is to be acquired by reading the Bible than in any other way.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Three that the Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man in his present state than any other book in the world.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Four that knowledge is most durable and religious instruction most useful when imparted in early life.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And five that the Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: My arguments in favor of the use of the Bible as a school book are founded one in the constitution of the human mind.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: The memory of the first faculty which opens in the minds of children.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of how much consequence then must it be to impress it with the great truths of Christianity, before it is preoccupied with less interesting subjects, as all the liquors which are poured into a cup generally taste of that which fruit filled it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So all the knowledge which is added to that which is treasured up in the memory from the Bible, generally receives an agreeable and useful tincature from it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: 2.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: There is a peculiar aptitude in the minds of children for religious knowledge.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: I have constantly found them in the first five or seven years of their lives, more inquisitive upon religious subjects than upon any others.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And an ingenious instructor of youth has informed me that he has found young children more capable of receiving just ideas upon the most difficult tenets of religion than upon the most simple branches of human knowledge.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: It would be strange if it were otherwise, for God creates all his means to suit all his ends.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: There must, of course, be a I don't know fitness between the human mind and the truths which are essential to its happiness.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Three.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Prejudices are of two kinds true and false.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: In a world where false prejudices do so much mischief, it would discover great weakness not to oppose them by such as are true.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I grant that many men have rejected the prejudices derived from the Bible, but I believe no man ever did so without having been made wiser or better by the early operation of these prejudices upon his mind.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Every just principle that is to be found in the writings of Voltaire is borrowed from the Bible, and the morality of the deis, which has been so much admired and praised, is, I believe, in most cases, the effect of habits produced by early instruction in the principles of Christianity.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: We are subject by a general law in our natures to what is called habit.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the study of the scriptures, if the studies of the scriptures be necessary to our happiness at any time of our lives, the sooner we begin to read them, the more we shall be attached to them, for it is peculiar to all the acts of habit to become early, strong, and agreeable by repetition.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: 5.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is a law in our nature that we remember longest the knowledge we acquire by the greatest number of our senses.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now a knowledge of the contents of the Bible is acquired in school by the aid of the eyes and the ears.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: For children, after getting their lessons, always say them to their masters in an audible voice.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, there is a presumption that this knowledge will be retained much longer than if it had been acquired in any other way.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Six.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: The interesting events and characters recorded and described in the Old and New Testaments are accommodated above all others to seize upon all the faculties of the minds of children.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: The understanding, the memory, the imagination, the passions, and the moral powers are all occasionally addressed by the various incidents which are contained in those divine books, insomuch that not to be delighted with them is to be devoid of every principle of pleasure that exists in a sound mind.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: There is a native love of truth in the human mind.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Lord Shafterberry says that truth is so congenial to our minds that we love even the shadow of it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Horace, in his rules for composing an epic poem, establishes the same law in our natures by advising the fictitious in poetry to resemble truth.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now the Bible contains more truths than any other book in the world.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So true is the testimony that it bears of God in his works of creation, providence, and redemption, that it is called truth itself by way of preeminence above things that are only simply true.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: How forcibly are we struck with the evidences of truth in the history of the Jews, above what we discover in the history of other nations?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where do we find a hero or a historian record his record his own faults or vices except in the Old Testament?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, my friend, from some accounts which I have read of the American Revolution, I begin to grow skeptical to all history except to that which is contained in the Bible.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if this book be known to contain nothing but what is materially true, the mind will naturally acquire a love for it from this circumstance.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And from this affection for the truths of the Bible, it will acquire a discernment of truth in other books and a preference of it in all their transactions of life.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: 8.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: There is a wonderful property in the memory which enables it in old age to recover the knowledge it had acquired in early life, after it had been apparently forgotten for forty or fifty years.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Of how much consequence then must it be to fill the mind with that species of knowledge in childhood and youth which, when recalled in the decline of life, will support the foul the soul under the infirmities of age and smooth the avenues of approaching death.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible is the only book which is capable of affording this support to old age, and it is for this reason that we find it resorted to with so much diligence and pleasure by such old people as have read it in early life.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I can recollect many instances of this kind in persons who discovered no attachment to the Bible in the meridian of their lives, who have notwithstanding spent the evening of them in reading no other book.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: The late Sir John Pringle, physician to the Queen of Great Britain, after passing a long life in camps and at court, closed it by studying the scriptures.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So anxious was he to increase his knowledge in them that he wrote to Dr.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Michaelis, a learned professor of divinity in Germany, for an explanation of a difficult text of Scripture a short time before his death.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: My second argument in favor of the use of the Bible in schools is founded upon an implied command of God, and upon the practice of several of the wisest nations of the world.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy we find the following words, which are directly to my purpose.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: It appears, moreover, from the history of the Jews that they flourished as a nation in proportion as they honored and read the books of Moses, which contained a written revelation of the will of God to the children of men.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: The law was not only neglected but lost during the general profligacy of manners which accompanied the long and wicked reign of Manasseh.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the discovery of it in the rubbish of the temple by Josiah and its subsequent general use were followed by a return of national virtue and prosperity.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: We read further of the wonderful effects which the reading of the law by Ezra after his return from captivity in Babylon had upon the Jews.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: They hung upon his lips with tears and showed the sincerity of their repentance by their general reformation.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: The learning of the Jews for many years consisted in nothing but a knowledge of the scriptures.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: These were the textbooks of all the instruction that was given in the schools of their prophets.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was by means of this general knowledge of their law that those Jews that wandered from Judea into our countries carried with them and propagated certain ideas of the true God among all the civilized nations upon the face of the earth.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was from the attachment they retained to the Old Testament that they procured a translation of it into the Greek language after they lost the Hebrew tongue by their long absence from their native country.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: The utility of this translation, commonly called the Ho Septungent, Septungent, I know I should know that, folks, but I don't, in facilitating the progress of the gospel, is well known to all who are acquainted with the history of the first age of the Christian church.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: But the benefits of an early and general acquaintance with the Bible were not confined only to the Jewish nations.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: They have appeared in many countries in Europe since the Reformation.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: The industry and habits of order, which distinguished many of the German nations, are derived from their early instruction in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: The moral and enlightened character of the inhabitants of Scotland and of the New England states appears to be derived from the same cause.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: If we descend from nation, nations to sects, we shall find them wise and prosperous in proportion as they become early acquainted with the scriptures.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible is still used as a school book among the Quakers.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: The morality of this sect of Christians is universally acknowledged.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Nor is this all.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Their prudence in the management of their private affairs is as much a mark of their society as their sober manners.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I wish to be excluded for repeating here that if the Bible did not convey a single direction for the attainment of future happiness, it should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: We err not only in human affairs, but in religion likewise, only because we do not know the scriptures.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: The opposite systems of the numerous sects of Christians arise chiefly from their being more instructed in catechisms, creeds, and confessions of faith than in the scriptures.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Immense truths, I believe, are concealed in them.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: The time, I have no doubt, will come when posterity will view and pity our ignorance of these truths, as much as we do the ignorance of the disciples of our Savior, who knew nothing of the meaning of those plain passages in the Old Testament, which were daily fulfilling before their eyes.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever that time shall arrive, those truths which have escaped our notice, or, if discovered, have been thought to be opposed to each other, or to be inconvenient.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: It inconsistent with themselves, will then, like the stones of Solomon's temple, be found so exactly to accord with each other that they shall be cemented without notice or force into one simple and sublime system of religion.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: But further, we err not only in religion but in philosophy likewise, because we do not know or believe the scriptures.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: The sciences have been compared to a circle of which religion composes a part.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: To understand any one of them perfectly, it is necessary to have some knowledge of them all.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Bacon, Boyle, and Newton included the scriptures in the inquiries to which their universal geniuses disposed them, and their philosophy was aided by their knowledge in them.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: A striking agreement has been lately discovered between the history of certain events recorded in the Bible and some of the operations and productions of nature, particularly those which are related in Whitehurst's observations on the Deluge, in Smith's account of the origin of the variety of color in the human species, and in Bruce's travels.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: It remains yet to be shown how many other events related in the Bible accord with some late important discoveries in the principles of medicine.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: The events and the principles alluded to mutually establish the truth of each other.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: From the discoveries of the Christian philosophers whose names have been last mentioned, I have been led to question whether most harm has been done to revelation by those divines who have unduly multiplied the objects of faith, or by those deists who have unduly multiplied the objects of reason in explaining the scriptures.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: I shall now proceed to answer some of the objections which have been made to the use of the Bible as a school book.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if you joined us on the previous podcast, this is a good spot to pick up.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is where we left off last week, and we're going to read the uh second half, more or less, of Benjamin Rush's essay on the defense of the use of the Bible in schools.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, we are told that the familiar use of the Bible in our schools has a tendency to lessen a due reverence for it.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: This objection, by proving too much, proves nothing at all.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: If familiarity lessens respect for divine things, then all those precepts of our religion, which enjoin the daily or weekly worship of the deity, are improper.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible was not intended to represent a Jewish ark.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is an anti-Christian idea to suppose that it can be profaned by being carried into a schoolhouse or by being handled by children.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: But where will the Bible be read by young people with more reverence than in a school?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not in most private families, for I believe there are few parents who preserve so much order in their houses as is kept up in our common English schools.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: We are told that there, number two, we are told that there are many passages in the Old Testament that are improper to be read by children, and that the greatest part of it is no way interesting to mankind under the present dispensation of the gospel.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: These are, I grant, there are, I grant, several chapters and many verses in the Old Testament, which in their present unfortunate translation should be passed over by children.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I deny that any of the books of the Old Testament are not interesting to mankind under the gospel dispensation.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the characters, events, and ceremonies mentioned in them are personal, providential, or instituted types of the Messiah, all of which have been or remain yet to be fulfilled by him.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is from an ignorance or neglect of these types that we had so many deists in Christendom, for so irregularly do they prove the truth of Christianity, that I am sure a young man who had been regularly instructed in their meaning could never doubt afterwards of the truth of any of its principles.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: If any obscurity appears in these principles, it is only to use the words of the poet, because they are dark with excessive bright.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know there is an objection among many people to teach children doctrines of any kind because they are liable to be controverted.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: But where will this objection lead us?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: The being of a god and the obligation of morality have both been controverted, and yet who has objected to our teaching these doctrines to our children?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: The curiosity and capacities of young people for the mysteries of religion awaken much sooner than is generally supposed.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Of this we have two remarkable proofs in the Old Testament.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: The first is mentioned in the twelfth chapter of Exodus.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it shall come when your children shall say unto you, What you what mean you by this service that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the children of Israel went away and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: A second proof of the desire of children to be instructed in the mysteries of religion is to be found in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And when thy son asketh thee in the time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God hath commanded you?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondsmen in Egypt, and the Lord our God bought brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: These inquiries from the mouths of children are perfectly natural.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: For where is the parent who has not had familiar questions proposed to him by his children upon their being first conducted to a place of worship, or upon their beholding for the first time, either the sacraments of our religion?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let us not be wiser than our Maker.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into our world would have been unnecessary.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: He came to promulgate a system of doctrines as well as a system of morals.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: The perfect morality of the gospel rests upon a doctrine which, though often controverted, has never been refuted.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: This sublime and ineffable doctrine delivers us from the absurd hypothesis of modern philosophers concerning the foundation of moral obligation and fixes it upon the eternal and self-moving principle of love.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: It concentrates a whole system of ethics in a single text of Scripture.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another even as I have loved you.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: By withholding the knowledge of this doctrine from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: We do more, we furnish an argument for withholding from them a knowledge of the morality of the gospel likewise, for this, in many instances, is as supernatural and therefore as liable to be controverted as any of the doctrines or miracles which are mentioned in the New Testament.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: The miraculous conception of the Savior of the world by a virgin is not more opposed to the ordinary course of natural events, nor is the doctrine of the atonement more above human reason than those moral precepts which command us to love our enemies or to die for our friends.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Three.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: It has been said that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses renders it more difficult to be read by children than many other books.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: By a little care and a master, this difficulty may be obviated and even an advantage derived from it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: It may serve to transfer the attention of the scholar to the sense of a subject.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And no person will ever read well who is guided by anything else in his stops, emphasis, or accents.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: The division of the Bible into chapters and verses is not a greater obstacle to its being read with ease than the bad punctuation of most other books.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I deliver this stricture upon other books from the authority of Mr.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Rice, the celebrated author of the Art of Speaking, whom I heard declare in a large company in London that he had never seen a book properly pointed in the English language.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: He exemplified, notwithstanding, by reading to the same company a passage from Milton, his perfect knowledge of the art of reading.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Some people I know have proposed to introduce extracts from the Bible into our schools instead of the Bible itself.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Many excellent works of this kind are in print, but if we admit any one of them, we shall have the same inundation of them that we had of grammars, spelling books, and lessons for children, many of which are published for the benefit of authors only, and all of them have tended greatly to increase the expense of education.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Besides, these extracts or abridgments of the Bible often contain the tenets of peculiar sects or persons, and therefore may be improper for schools composed of children of different denominations of Christians.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible is a cheap book, and it is to be had in every bookstore.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is, moreover, esteemed and preferred by all denominations because each finds its peculiar doctrines in it.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It should therefore be used in preference to any abridgments of it or histories extracted from it.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard proposed that a portion of the Bible should be read every day by the master as a means of introducing children in it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: But this is a poor substitute for obliging children to read it as a school book, for by this means we insensibly engrave, as it were, its contents upon their minds.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it has been remarked that children instructed in this way in the scriptures seldom forget any part of them.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: They have the same advantage over those persons who have only heard the scriptures read by a master, that a man who has worked with the tools of a mechanical employment for several years has over the man who has only stood a few hours in a workshop and seen the same business carried on by other people.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: In this defense of the use of the Bible as a school by school book, I beg you would not think that I suppose the Bible to contain the only revelation which God has made to man.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I believe in an internal revelation or a moral principle, which God has implanted in the heart of every man as the procurior of his final dominion over the whole human race.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: How much this internal revelation accords with the external remains yet to be explored by philosophers.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I am disposed to believe that most of the doctrines of Christianity revealed in the Bible might be discovered by a close examination of all the principles of action in man.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: But who is equal to such an inquiry?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: It certainly does not suit the natural indolence or laborious employments of a great majority of mankind.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: The internal revelation of the gospel may be compared to the straight line which is made through the wilderness by the assistance of a compass to a different country, which few are able to discover, while the Bible resembers resembles a public road to the same country which is wide, plain, and easily found.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Neither let me in this place exclude the revelation which God has made of himself to man and the works of creation.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: I am far from wishing to lessen the influence of this species of revelation upon mankind.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the knowledge of God obtained from this source is obscure and feeble in its operation compared with that which is derived from the Bible.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: The visible creation bespoke the deity in hieroglyphics, while the Bible describes all his attributes and perfection in such plain and familiar language that he who runs may read.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: How kindly has our Maker dealt with his creatures in providing three different cores to draw them to himself, but how weakly do some men act who suspend their faith and hopes upon only one of them.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: By laying hold of them all, they would approach more speedily and certainly to the center of all happiness.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: To the arguments I have mentioned in favor of the use of the Bible as a school book, I shall add a few reflections.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: The present fashionable practice of rejecting the Bible from our schools, I suspect, has originated with the deists.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: They discover great ingenuity in this new mode of attacking Christianity.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: If they proceed in it, they will do more in half a century in extirpating our religion than Bolingbrook or Voltaire could have effected in a thousand years.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I am not writing to this class of people.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I despair of changing the opinions of any of them.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: I wish only to alter the opinions and conduct of those lukewarm or superstitious Christians who have been misled by the deists upon this subject.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: On the ground of the good old custom of using the Bible as a school book, it becomes us to entrench our religion.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is the last bulwark the deists have left it, for they have rendered instruction in the principles of Christianity by the pulpit and the press so unfashionable that little good for many years seems to have been done by either of them.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: The effects of the disuse of the Bible as a school book have appeared of late in the neglect and even contempt with which scriptural names are treated by many people.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is because parents have not been early taught to know or respect the characters and exploits of the Old and New Testament worthies, that their names are exchanged for those of the modern kings of Europe, or the principal characters in novels and romances.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I conceive there may be some advantage in bearing scripture names.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: It may lead the persons who bear them to study that part of the scriptures in which their names are mentioned with uncommon attention, and perhaps it may excite a desire in them to possess the talents or virtues of their ancient namesakes.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: This remark first occurred to me upon hearing a pious woman whose name was Mary say that the first passages of the Bible which made a serious impression on her mind were those interesting chapters and verses in which the name of Mary is mentioned in the New Testament.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: It is a singular fact that while the names of the kings and emperors of Rome are now given chiefly to horses and dogs, scripture names have hitherto been confined only to the human species.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let the enemies and consumers of those names take care.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Lest the names of more modern kings be given hereafter only to the same animals, and lest the names of the modern heroines of romances be given to animals of an inferior species.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is with great pleasure that I have observed the Bible to be the only book read in the Sunday schools in England.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have adopted the same practice in the Sunday schools lately established in this city.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: This will give our religion, humanly speaking, the chance of a longer life in our country.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: We hear much of the persons educated in free schools in England, turning out well in the various walks of life.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: I have inquired into the cause of it, and have satisfied myself that it is wholly to be ascribed to the general use of the Bible in those schools, for it seems the children of poor people are of too little consequence to be guarded from the supposed evils of reading the scriptures in early life or in an unconsecrated schoolhouse.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: However great the benefits of reading the scriptures in schools have been, I cannot help remarking that these benefits might be much greater.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: Did schoolmasters take more pains to explain them to their scholars?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Did they demonstrate the divine original of the Bible from the purity, consistency, and benevolence of its doctrines and precepts?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: Did they explain the meaning of the Levitical instructions and show their application to the numerous and successive gospel dispensations?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did they inform their pupils that the gross and abominable vices of the Jews were recorded only as proofs of the depravity of human nature and of the insufficiency of the law to produce moral virtue and thereby to establish the necessity and perfection of the gospel system?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And above all, did they often enforce the discourses of our Savior as the best rule of life and the surest guide to happiness?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: How great would be the influence of our schools upon the order and prosperity of our country?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Such a mode of instructing children in the Christian religion would convey knowledge into their understandings, and would therefore be preferable to teaching them creeds and catechisms, which too often convey not knowledge, but words only into their memories.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think I am not too sanguine in believing that education conducted in this manner would, in the course of two generations, eradicate infidelity from among us and render civil government scarcely necessary in our country.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: We profess to be Republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our Republican forms of government.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is, the universal education of our youth and the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: For this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: I have now only to apologize for having addressed this letter to you after having been assured by you that your opinion respecting the use of the Bible as a school book coincided with mine.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: My excuse for what I have done is that I knew you were qualified by your knowledge and disposed by your zeal in the cause of truth to correct all the errors you would discover in my letter.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps a further apology may be necessary for my having presumed to write upon a subject so much above my ordinary studies.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: My excuse for it is that I thought a single mic from a member of a profession which has been frequently charged with skepticism in religion might attract the notice of persons who had often overlooked the more ample contributions upon the subject of gentlemen of other professions.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: With great respect, I am, dear sir, dear sir, your sincere friend.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the essay that he wrote.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a letter that he wrote titled The Defense of the Use of the Bible in School.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I can look back here real quick and see the letter was to Jeremy Belknapp, Belknapp of Boston.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think, especially in the second half, one of the themes that we really need to pay attention to is that whatever we can do to spread the gospel will help America as far as freedom and liberty in our Republican institutions.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's Republican with a small R, not talking about the Republican political party today.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in any way possible, as much as possible.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's the best thing we can do to help America.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power of the glory forever and ever.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: God bless y'all.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: God bless your families, your marriages, your children, your nation, wherever you are around the world listening.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: God bless America.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to it.